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Archiving Directories
---------------------

   You can archive a directory by specifying its directory name as a
file name argument to `tar'.  The files in the directory will be
archived relative to the working directory, and the directory will be
re-created along with its contents when the archive is extracted.

   To archive a directory, first move to its superior directory.  If you
have followed the previous instructions in this tutorial, you should
type:

     $ cd ..
     $

This will put you into the directory which contains `practice', i.e.
your home directory.  Once in the superior directory, you can specify
the subdirectory, `practice', as a file name argument.  To store
`practice' in the new archive file `music.tar', type:

     $ tar --create --verbose --file=music.tar practice

`tar' should output:

     practice/
     practice/blues
     practice/folk
     practice/jazz
     practice/collection.tar

   Note that the archive thus created is not in the subdirectory
`practice', but rather in the current working directory--the directory
from which `tar' was invoked.  Before trying to archive a directory
from its superior directory, you should make sure you have write access
to the superior directory itself, not only the directory you are trying
archive with `tar'.  For example, you will probably not be able to
store your home directory in an archive by invoking `tar' from the root
directory; Note: absolute.  (Note also that `collection.tar', the
original archive file, has itself been archived.  `tar' will accept any
file as a file to be archived, regardless of its content.  When
`music.tar' is extracted, the archive file `collection.tar' will be
re-written into the file system).

   If you give `tar' a command such as

     $ tar --create --file=foo.tar .

`tar' will report `tar: ./foo.tar is the archive; not dumped'.  This
happens because `tar' creates the archive `foo.tar' in the current
directory before putting any files into it.  Then, when `tar' attempts
to add all the files in the directory `.' to the archive, it notices
that the file `./foo.tar' is the same as the archive `foo.tar', and
skips it.  (It makes no sense to put an archive into itself.)  GNU
`tar' will continue in this case, and create the archive normally,
except for the exclusion of that one file.  (_Please note:_ Other
versions of `tar' are not so clever; they will enter an infinite loop
when this happens, so you should not depend on this behavior unless you
are certain you are running GNU `tar'.)